Tutorial:Templates 101
Templates 101 Hi all, Roseflame here to finally describe in an orderly fashion what you need to know to use a template and to edit a page made with a template. 'What is a template?' Well basically a template is a wiki page that is premade in a certain way. This allows standardization amongst pages that are related: the various Skill, Class, Quest, Map, etc. pages. How does it do this? How is it different than just copying and pasting a premade page but changing a few key points (like names, descriptions, etc)? Well it does this through being made in a different way. Instead of data, the template designer uses "placeholders" or "variables" to represent data supplied by a user. 'What does this all mean?' This basically means 2 things. *That we can all make pages that look nice, have all the data necessary, and layed out in a order and structure that is stable. *Design updates can be widespread, and any great ideas for a page using a template can be applied to all the templates, without changing every page. 'Why is this helpful?' Well lets say that we get all the quest wiki pages done and they all follow the format of the "Template:Quest" template. They would look like this! However all of a sudden we decide that we decided to instead of just saying who the quest is given by, and who we deliver it to, we also want to see what map these people are in. Without a template we must change every single quest page, and so it would really be a pain to do. But with the template, we can simply change the Template:Quest page to automatically go to the page about that npc, and find its location (which can be done in a few lines of code!). Then every quest page would reflect that change and it wouldn't take hours of time to do. 'YAY!!! How can I help?' Well template writing can be surprisingly tough, and it takes a dair bit of knowledge in scripting and coding and linking.... and a willingness to wear out your { and } keys! (I'm not kidding by the way: a sample segment of the code used to display some skill info from another page is this: } |, | }}} | }: } |, | }}} | }: } |, | }}}}} | }} | }} If your reaction to that was confusion or fear, then best way to help is by making pages and filling in information!!! (That is the most crucial part by the way). However if you look at that and see beauty and a desire to learn more. Then by all means please experiment with templates. (Just one request, please dont change any of the code for the templates in wide use, one changed or misplaced {, }, |, comma or space will make any pages using that template break as well. I'm not saying to not change what has been made, but please test an edit before submitting it, also if it is a change to a often used template, ask the people who use the template what they think about the changes before submitting them). (I use whats called a sandbox to test out my template changes first, more about that later) *For more information about using a template to make a page, see Using a Template Thanks for reading and using the wikia!!! Roseflame 18:47, February 6, 2011 (UTC) Category:Guide